🚀 go-pugleaf

With all due respect, I think the correct solution to the problem of
forced precedence in mail addresses is to conform to RFC <you-name-it>
by installing smail or other compliant software.

The suggestion that [a$b&c!d#f]@host.domain ought to be shipped off to
"host" who will then interpret the remaining mess is fine - except
that the brackets to force the high-order precedence of `@' are not at
all necessary by virtue of the fact that `@' is the only recognized
addressing character according to the relevant RFCs.  So everything
right of `@' is what a compliant host needs to consider for relay
purposes, everything left of `@' is used for whatever you want to use
it for, and I don't have to cope with that in any way.  The only way
I'd have to try to cope with it is if strcmp(host.domain,
"cbstr1.att.com") == 0, in which case I'm obliged to handle the "local
part" on the left - and in which case I'll bounce it back at you as an
unrecognizable mess.  (Full names and login names only, thanx much.)

The RFC is nice enough to hand me a very clear rule about this, so
your brackets to force precedence are really very unnecessary.  Sites
converting local.part@host.domain to some other syntax, or trying to
handle local.part when they are not the destination host.domain, are
violating the RFC constraints.

Karl